Artemis II heads to launch with Marshall on deck
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Harish Chandranath, PMOD HLS project lead, shows media where they'll monitor the HLS for Artemis III. Photo: Derek Lacey/Axios
Artemis II is stacked and nearly ready for launch.
Why it matters: At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, officials are poised to support that mission as it enters a launch window starting Feb. 6, and as it circles the moon before returning to Earth.
- Crews at Marshall will also watch as years of hard work pay off, taking the first astronauts to the moon since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.
Catch up quick: Artemis II will take four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby as NASA eyes its next chapter of space exploration, including a long-term presence on the moon and future trips to Mars.
- And Huntsville's fingerprints will be all over it.
Zoom in: At a media event Wednesday, NASA officials touted all the ways Marshall and the wider aerospace community is involved in the mission.
What they're saying: "Marshall's unique facilities, cutting-edge technologies and world-class workforce are critical to helping NASA lead the way in taking humanity farther than ever before," said Rae Ann Meyer, acting director at MSFC.
- That work centers on two pillars of the mission that are led in Huntsville: the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Human Landing System (HLS), the latter of which will come into play with Artemis III.
Case in point: "This is one of the most complex machines that humans have ever created," said Dave Reynolds, booster program manager for SLS.
- As Artemis II goes through the pre-launch routine, including the Wet Dress Rehearsal by Feb. 2, Reynolds will be watching to make sure the boosters perform as planned.
Driving the news: As spaceflight continues to commercialize — including the Human Landing System which will be constructed by SpaceX — NASA officials say SLS is still the best tool for this job.
- "It is the only rocket that can take [a] crew in the Orion spacecraft and large cargoes to the moon in a single launch," said Sharon Cobb, associate program manager for SLS.
Zoom out: Marshall is home to the SLS Engineering Support Center, monitoring mission data and providing support from the ground.
- Also based at Marshall is the Systems Integration Lab, where all software on the SLS is tested on simulators that can mimic real-time launch conditions to see how the rocket would perform.
- Crews will also man control rooms at Marshall around the clock during the 10-day mission, monitoring payload operations for Artemis II. And on Artemis III, they'll do the same for the HLS.
The bottom line: "We still have a frontier to explore, and this is an exploration rocket," Reynolds said, of SLS.